Originally Posted by
TwoWheel
I have owned and raced all Tamiya Front wheel drive touring cars. In general, the FF01 is the most planted, but has the most understeer if you overcook corners a lot, the FF02 handles like a bigger front wheel drive M-chassis car (which it is). In the end, the corner speed of the FF03 is head and shoulders above both previous models because of the lower center of gravity.
Now for the FF03. Early on, I would agree with the quoted text above. In fact, I had loaned out my FF01 to someone else for our FWD race series, and he smoked my FF03 because I thought that it was too tail happy.
But, the key is understanding the chassis. The chassis is very sensitive to diff adjustments AND weight placement. Let me explain further.
The Scirocco body with the FF03 has been much maligned as not a good body to have on a medium to loose track, but why?
People say it's "aero," and I called b.s. Take that HEAVY plastic wing and hardware off and, instantly, the car is more planted. I further tested by leaving the wing on, and adding twice what the wing and hardware weighs directly below where the wing would be on the chassis, and the car again is instantly planted.
In my own testing, I would disagree with the post above regarding diff setting. I have found that no matter the diff you choose, ball or gear, you just have to run it *tight* as in very little diff action and again, that car is no longer "tail happy" in any situation. How tight? I can almost turn the motor by spinning just one front wheel. If you want more steering, just go looser on the diff. I found that this has a greater effect on the car's general attitude more than anything else
Many have been running the hardest Tamiya front springs on their FF03 to try and tame it down, but buy first running a fairly tight diff and adding some weight above the rear axle, I've found that I can run the front a bit softer and it ends up being more forgiving to drive overall.
That is very interesting, I'll have to do more testing as I did not run that car too much. I used to run front gear diff with ride 45wt putty and in low speed the car handles well but very twitchy in high speed on throttle. I then went to 30k diff fluid and that calmed the car down a bit. I think in terms of how tight the diff is, I could always turn the motor with spinning one wheel, including very high torque rotor motors in a 4.1 fdr. There might be a point of no return on diff tightness where too much locking will make the car unstable on throttle because the front outside tire is pulling on the front end too hard. however, if off throttle, the car is pretty stable although not always.